It’s been cold! But not too cold to plant, especially the bare-root fruits and vegetables that explode into nurseries this month. Deciduous fruit trees like peaches, apricots, apples and plums are all best planted now, as are bare-root blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, artichokes and rhubarb. Potato and onion sets are in nurseries now, too.

Select low-chill varieties of fruits. Every deciduous fruit tree, vine and shrub is labeled with its chill-hour requirements. A chill hour is roughly one nighttime hour below 40 degrees. Unless you live in the mountains, choose varieties that require 500 or fewer chill hours.

While you shop for best fruits, also shop for best roots. When fruit trees are grafted, the fruiting wood on top is matched to a rootstock on the bottom. Some rootstocks are chosen because they tolerate heavy soils or resist certain soil diseases, others to dwarf tree sizes, and so on. Read the labels to find the best combination of fruit and root for your garden.

• Know your ’chokes. Artichoke (Cynara scolymus) is a big perennial with enormous, gray-green, frondlike leaves. Plants make the spiny buds that we harvest, steam and eat with mayonnaise or other yummy dips. Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) is a giant, perennial sunflower. Its edible part is a starchy, underground tuber that is cooked in soups and gratins, mixed with potatoes and so on. In bare-root form, they can be easy to confuse. If you aren’t sure which is which, ask in the nursery.

• Resist the urge to clean up cold-damaged plants. They may look sad, but those damaged leaves and stems help protect the rest of the plant from future freezes between now and Feb. 1 (along the coast), March 1 (coastal valleys and the desert), April 1 (inland) or May 1 (in the mountains).

• Fertilize established stone fruit trees with a low-nitrogen fertilizer such as a 3:12:12 formulation with trace elements. Organic sources are best. Follow label directions.

• Prune roses, but not too much. They needn’t be taken down to the ground like gardeners do in cold-weather areas. Clean up dead or diseased branches and head them back a bit, but allow your roses to grow like the shrubs that they are. Spray bare rosebushes with dormant copper spray.

• Continue to plant low-water, Mediterranean-climate plants, including California natives. Water deeply at planting, then water again periodically to keep the soil around the roots damp, not wet. By this time next year, they can probably survive with little if any irrigation.

• Before you mulch, check drip irrigation system for leaks, kinks, etc. Open the end of drip lines and run the system for a few minutes to flush it. Flush every few months to keep your system in optimum working condition.

• Shop for and plant winter-blooming aloes. Many aloes are showing their magnificent coral or yellow candelabra this time of year. It’s a great time to choose new ones for your garden.

• There’s still time to plant California poppies and seeds for other wildflowers that bloom in spring.

• Shop for spring and summer vegetable and flower seeds to plant in late February and in March.

• Learn to start vegetables, fruits and herbs from seeds in one of my seed starting workshops, offered at different locations around the county in March. For information, email info@plantsoup.com. Write “Seed Starting Workshop” in the subject line.